$10M drug operation busted in the Poconos, NYC, NJ

Friday

Mar 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 5, 2013 at 4:42 PM

About 50 people, mostly Pocono residents, have been charged in three separate prescription drug rings that raked in a total of $10 million in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, state and federal authorities said Thursday.

ANDREW SCOTT

About 50 people, mostly Pocono residents, have been charged in three separate prescription drug rings that raked in a total of $10 million in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, state and federal authorities said Thursday.

Authorities armed with search warrants also seized 28 guns in Pennsylvania and two in New York as part of the two-prong, 15-month investigation dubbed "Operation Script King" in Pennsylvania and "Operation Cuba Libre" in New York.

Investigators charged John Romagnolo, 44, of Cresco, who reportedly called himself the "Script King," and Bryn Walter Stevenson, 29, of Tannersville, with leading separate drug rings competing against each other in Pennsylvania.

Romagnolo, Stevenson and Patricia Rodriguez kept track of when and where each filler filled a prescription so as not to draw pharmacy or law enforcement attention.

Romagnolo and Stevenson paid their respective fillers cash or delivered pills back to them as payment for filling the prescriptions.

The fillers used cash or private insurance or medical assistance cards to pay for the prescriptions, paying $20 to $30 per Oxycodone 30-miligram tablet.

If the fillers paid with insurance, it cost less to fill the prescription and the organizations reaped more profit.

From February 2011 to December 2012, Romagnolo and Stevenson filled a total of over 500 prescriptions, using 100 different names to fraudulently obtain over 70,000 Oxycodone 30-miligram tablets worth $2.1 million on the street.

Authorities said northeastern Pennsylvania's demand for Oxycodone was so high that many pharmacies ran out of the drug or refused to fill prescriptions.